NIGHTS IN THE GARDENS OF BROOKLYN by Harvey Swados

own sensitivity against the callousness of others; then suddenly it was turned topsy-turvy when a girl, your own daughter, told you that you were better then you were, or seemed to be, and you knew in your own heart that she was wrong.
    What was right? What was fair? Was it better to stay away—or to go away, now that he was here—and leave Kate with her childish illusions untarnished—or should he assume the responsibilities of a father even to the point of trying to open her eyes to the truth about him? No one could answer such a question for you, not your agent or your manager or your current girl friend or your best drinking pal.
    He tightened his lips and turned into the block of elm-shaded bungalows where fathers were walking home to dinner down the cracked old concrete sidewalks and their children were coasting slowly alongside them on box scooters; they turned their heads to stare at his car as he brought it to a stop in front of Lisa’s house.
    “I’ll just drop you here, Kate,” he said. “You can tell your mother that I’ll come by after dinner, if she won’t mind.”
    Kate stopped dead, her hand frozen on the door handle. He was not sure in that instant whether she was bewildered or angry. Her eyebrows came together in a frown and she said in a pained voice, “Do you mean you don’t want to see her at all? Do you want her to be away when you come back, is that it?”
    “No, no,” he replied agitatedly, “it’s just that it’s almost suppertime and I don’t—” but he had to stop because it was obvious that the only way he could prove to her that her father was not a coward after all was to walk up the weathered gray wooden steps of the porch with her and spin the rusting iron bell in the middle of the front door. “Come on,” he said gruffly, “let’s go.”
    But of course Kate would not let him stand formally on the porch of her house, waiting for her mother to answer the bell. Roy had time only to notice that the house needed painting and that the metal glider, still standing where it had a dozen years ago, was mottled with rust spots, before he was pulled into the dim fronthall and then into the parlor, with Kate shouting, “Mother, Mother, see who I brought home with me!”
    Lisa came out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. The light was behind her as she advanced, and his first thought was that she had not put on any weight at all. Her figure was slim and fine, just as it had been when they were first married; but then she turned her head in response to a kitchen noise, cocking it a little, like a pretty canary in a cage, just as she used to do when he played something for her that he had just composed, and he saw that she was middle-aged.
    Although he had been creating mental images of what Lisa would look like for some time now, her actual appearance was a revelation to him—while she, who was utterly unprepared for this occasion, looked at him almost serenely now, her shock betrayed only by a quick intake of breath and by a widening and darkening of her pupils that became apparent as she moved toward him through the twilit dining room and the waning light struck her face.
    Her nose seemed sharper than he remembered, and as her nostrils dilated and her chest rose in a shuddering sigh, two grooves that he did not remember appeared on either side of her nose and mouth; her neck, that had been arched and swanlike in her girlhood, was beginning to sag under her chin. Roy felt sick with anguish and pity, both for Lisa and for himself—he was staring, he knew, at the wreckage of his youth—and yet it seemed to him that, simply because she carried the stigmata more obviously, she bore the encroachments of approaching middle age more gracefully than he.
    “Hello, Roy,” she said. “This is quite a surprise. How are you?”
    “Just fine. You’re looking very well, Lisa.” He was tempted to add,
You’re starting to look like the librarians and the schoolteachers and the